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Rosamund remained passive. The tears that she could not restrain
did not matter here, and they kept her from the lowest of those
abysmal depths that she had sounded before something snapped
within her, and she had felt herself falling helplessly, in the convent
parlour, with Mrs. Mulholland’s large, frightened old face wavering
strangely before her eyes.
Since then, unutterable weariness and yet unutterable relief had
taken possession of her. Frances was dead, and Frances was hers
again as in the days when they had been children together, and seen
all life before them in an illimitable perspective. Of Porthlew, she
thought hardly at all. Her mind had gone back to the Wye Valley
days. Old formulæ that had passed between the two, long since
forgotten, little trivial memories that had been common to them both,
thronged to Rosamund’s mind almost involuntarily in her weakness,
and the finality held by Death seemed the only refuge from the far
more poignant finality that life had offered.
In the curious need of dependence which utter physical and mental
lassitude induces, Rosamund, scarcely conscious of even a vague
surprise, found that she had turned to Mrs. Mulholland.
The old woman toiled heavily up the narrow stairs that led to the
infirmary, and spent the spring afternoons sitting by the window in
the tiny room, with her work held close to her spectacles, while she
talked with her odd matter-of-fact piety to Rosamund, or listened to
her few replies and questions.
One day she brought her some flowers, and Rosamund sobbed and
cried over them, and tried to tell Mrs. Mulholland why, and could not.
“Now, my poor dear child, don’t try to talk about it. The fact is you’re
still very weak, and the least thing oversets you. But you must
remember that your dear little sister has much better flowers to look
at where she is now than any this poor old earth can offer. Eye hath
not seen——” said Mrs. Mulholland, shaking her head. “I often think
if this earth is so beautiful with flowers and everything, why, what
must Heaven be?”
Rosamund looked at her.
“Violets all the year round, most probably,” pursued the old lady
cheerfully, “though, to be sure, it’s absurd to talk of all the year round
in eternity—but one always thinks of it as being spring or summer in
Heaven. But whatever it is, my dear, you may depend upon it that
your sister is seeing all the wonderful things that have been
promised to those who forsake everything for God.”
“Can she be happy if she knows that I am still here?” asked
Rosamund wistfully.
“Happy in the Will of God. And I am sure that time seems only a
flash to her, though to us it feels so long, and then you’ll be with her
and can enjoy it all together. And then, you know, it will be for
eternity, and there will be no more parting,” said Mrs. Mulholland
earnestly.
“It will be just like it used to be, and all the years in between will be
forgotten,” sobbed Rosamund.
“That’s it, my dear. Now doesn’t the thought of that meeting give you
courage?”
“Perhaps. It isn’t as real to me as it is to you.”
“Brought up without very much religion, perhaps,” acquiesced Mrs.
Mulholland cheerfully. “Well, well, your dear little sister will do
wonders for you. A vocation in a family is a very great grace, and
certainly she had done all our Lord wanted of her on earth, and that’s
why He took her to Himself in Heaven.”
The Heaven, beautiful, material, and yet fadeless and endless,
presented thus to her brought a strange weary comfort to
Rosamund’s mind.
“We shall be together again, and it will be just like before she went
away—only better,” she repeated, like a child.
“Yes—much, much better. Nothing to end it, and then God’s holy
presence, you know. It will all be merged in that.”
“And the people we’ve loved on earth?” urged Rosamund, as though
she needed reassurance from her companion’s robust certainties.
“Yes, yes, all of them. We may have to wait a little while for some,
you know, because they’ve purgatory to go through—and so have
we for the matter of that—but Sister Frances is safe enough, my
dear. Nuns have their purgatory on earth, is what I always say. And a
little pure soul like that—why, she’s waiting up there now, for you, I
expect. I shall get there before you, my dear, please God, and you
may be quite sure I shall give you better prayers there than I can
here.”
“Do you want to die, Mrs. Mulholland?”
“Only when God pleases, my dear. A year or two more or less won’t
make very much difference, except that it gives one more time to try
and get ready. But of course I look forward to getting to Heaven—
naturally I do.”
“And do you think you will find the people you love there?”
“Yes, dear, yes,” Mrs. Mulholland patiently reiterated. “I often think
how very strange it will be to meet Michael again—that’s my
husband, who died more than forty years ago, after we’d been
married five years. A very bad husband he was to me—I married a
non-practising Catholic, my dear, and a terrible mistake it was, too—
but thank God he made a very good confession at the last, and died
in a state of grace. But of course he must be very much changed,
since he was just a bad man when I knew him—neither more nor
less—except for that little while at the end. But with all the prayers
and the Masses that have been offered, and God’s good mercy, I
can’t help hoping that poor Michael is a blessed spirit in Heaven by
this time.”
She nodded her head, and Rosamund thought that her lips moved
as in some intercession that had grown habitual through long use.
“I’ve had a lot of trouble, my dear—always have had—and but for the
Faith I should be an unhappy old woman. But look at what God has
done for me,” cried Mrs. Mulholland triumphantly; “brought me here,
to the convent, with all these good nuns, so that I shall probably end
my days amongst them, and get all their prayers to shorten my time
in purgatory. Nearly twenty years I’ve been here, my dear, and my
position quite established, I assure you. I live by rule, you know,
though I’m not a nun—follow the office, have my own little corner in
the chapel—and then the Superior likes me to keep an eye on the
lady boarders. ‘La mère des dames pensionnaires’ the lay-sisters
call me. I look after them, you know. ‘Come to me if you want
anything,’ is what I always tell them. ‘The nuns are very busy—spare
them all we can. Come to me instead,’ I always say. ‘If I can’t help
you, well and good, I’ll refer you to the proper quarter,’ says I, ‘but
come to me first.’ That spares the nuns a little, and I generally find
that trifling difficulties can be put right without troubling them. That’s
the advantage of my position here.”
Rosamund listened passively. She liked Mrs. Mulholland to talk. Her
deep, rather hoarse voice seemed to make a link between reality
and that abyss into which one had fallen, where nothing was real or
solid but thick tangible darkness and endless despairing pain. While
Mrs. Mulholland went on talking, it was as though a faint ray of light
filtered down, reminding one that above the abyss there still lay solid
ground with the sky overhead.
Then, very slowly, Rosamund realized that she had left the worst
depths behind her. Never again would she know the blighting,
searing agony of those first moments, and never again would she be
as though she had not known them.
The initiation which life holds for most of us varies as strangely in its
character as does the intensity of its effect upon us.
Rosamund said to Mrs. Mulholland one day:
“I feel as though this was the first time I’d ever felt anything—as
though other things in my life had been only a sort of pretence. And
yet they weren’t. My mother’s death, when I was a little girl, and
leaving home, and other things—which happened at Porthlew—I
minded them all. I fell in love with somebody, and thought that must
be the realest thing in the word. And it made me very unhappy—it
really did.”
She looked at Mrs. Mulholland, not expecting her to offer any
solution, but feeling a sort of weary solace in putting her confused
thoughts into words.
“But, you know, it doesn’t seem at all real now. It never touched
bedrock. In a sort of way—I brought unhappiness to it—not it to me.”
“It’s very often so, my dear,” said Mrs. Mulholland placidly.
“Sometimes we need a very sharp lesson to take us out of
ourselves. That’s where God’s wisdom is so far above ours. He sees
what we need, and orders all things for the best. The loss of your
dear sister will bring you nearer to God.”
The words might hold a simple direct interpretation for Mrs.
Mulholland that could never be Rosamund’s, but their truth was
destined to abide with her in an ever expanding certainty.
“You are very, very kind to me,” she said wistfully; “everyone is.”
“You’re one of us, as Sister Frances Mary’s sister. The convent tie is
a very real one, you know, though people in the world like to think it’s
not. But you have a number of friends, my dear, outside, as well as
here. I have a lot of letters for you, only Mother Juliana suggested
that you might be better without them just at first. Would you like
them now?”
Rosamund took the little sheaf gently.
The writers seemed strangely remote to her, but she read with a faint
stirring of gratitude her guardian’s long letter.
Bertha offered to come to her, would have done so instantly, but for
the illness of Cousin Frederick, who, they terribly feared, was
threatened with pneumonia.
“But come to me as soon as you are able to, dearest child. I feel torn
in two, as you can imagine, and only wish I could be in both places
at once. If poor Minnie would be of any comfort, telegraph to me and
I’ll send her. I can easily manage the sitting up at nights for a time;
anyhow, if this is going to be the long illness the doctor fears, we
shall have to get a trained nurse. Remember there’s home waiting
for you, my Rosamund, and an old woman who’s been through a
good deal herself one way and another, and only longs to help and
comfort you. One finds out, as one goes along, that nothing matters
except to lend a hand.”
“I ought to go back,” said Rosamund. “I am quite well now. But I don’t
know what my life is going to be. Porthlew doesn’t seem to be right
for me, somehow. It never did—and I thought that Francie and I
would go back to the Wye Valley together. The cottage is ours.”
“Now don’t look too far ahead,” urged Mrs. Mulholland. “One step at
a time, is what I always say.
“‘Lord, for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray,
But help me, teach me, guide me, Lord, just for to-day.’
Have you never heard that before? Dear me, dear me, I don’t believe
you Protestant girls are ever taught anything at all. Excuse me for
saying so, my dear, but really it’s true. Now before you settle
anything I should like you to have a good talk with Mère Pauline.”
The Superior saw Rosamund in the parlour, but the understanding
which she was ready to extend as to one of her own daughters in
religion, failed oddly to touch any responsive chord. It was as though
the two spoke different languages.
Rosamund did not want to talk with the convent chaplain, as Mère
Pauline suggested, and felt merely a faint distaste at the suggestion
that “cette épreuve” might be meant to guide her into the way of the
true Faith.
Mère Pauline did not pursue the subject, but she appeared uneasy
at Rosamund’s listless suggestion of returning to Porthlew.
“Je n’aime pas cette atmosphère-là,” she remarked with an air of
omniscience that sat oddly on her little spectacled countenance.
The direct act of God therefore appeared to Mère Pauline solely
responsible for the next letter from Mrs. Tregaskis, which again
altered Rosamund’s plans.
Frederick Tregaskis was very ill with pneumonia.
“I don’t leave him day or night,” wrote Bertha, “and the
house would be utterly dreary for you just now. Stay on at
 the convent, my dear, if you’re finding peace and shelter
there, and when I’ve battled through the worst of this we
must look forward to meeting. It’s a sad world, Rosamund,
my dear, but there’s nothing for it but to keep a stiff upper
lip. I’ll write when I can.
“Your ever loving old
“B. H. T.”
“Poor Cousin Bertie,” said Rosamund.
“Il faut prier,” said Mère Pauline. “But you, my child. Will you stay on
with us, as one of our lady boarders?”
“If there were some work that I might do—it is so difficult to do
nothing.”
“Yes. I will reflect. A good Catholic family life is the atmosphere that I
should wish for you at present, poor little one. But I will reflect.”
That Mère Pauline’s reflections were apt to take a practical turn was
demonstrated three days later by a letter from Lady Argent begging
Rosamund to come to her.
She wrote that she was alone.
So Rosamund went back to the Wye Valley.
“God bless you, my dear child,” said Mrs. Mulholland heartily. “Come
back and see us again, and don’t forget that there’s God’s good
purpose behind everything, whether we can see it or not.”
“Will there be some sort of definite solution to it all, in time?”
Rosamund asked.
She had come to have a curious reliance on Mrs. Mulholland’s
opinionative statements.
“To be sure, my dear. You haven’t been through all this for nothing,
you know,” said Mrs. Mulholland, shaking her head wisely. “Now I’m
going into the garden to say my office, and you know that I shall
always give you and dear little Sister Frances a special intention. I’ve
put you in together.”
She kissed Rosamund warmly, then kilted her skirts in her
accustomed fashion and took her old black manuals out into the
spring sunshine and began her slow, steady pounding walk round
and round the small enclosure.
The years would see little change for Mrs. Mulholland, until that last
one which she contemplated with such matter-of-fact anticipation.
Something in that certainty sent Rosamund away with a strange
lessening of the tension at her heart.
She went back to the Wye Valley, and after a little while she went
across to the cottage.
Afterwards, Rosamund thought that it was on that day that she
received the first hint of the solution that she had been seeking. But
at the time she was conscious only of a blurred, aching pain, that yet
held the strange solemnity of final peace.
The spring rain was driving against the window-panes and the
outlines of the hills were dimmed.
Rosamund wept wildly and uncontrollably, but after that afternoon
she bade farewell to the stormy tears of her girlhood, and they came
to her no more.
There is a certain sort of weeping that, when it has once been wrung
from a woman’s eyes, precludes the easy relief of trivial tears for
almost all the rest of her life.
Rosamund went over the small house and found it strangely
unchanged. Through it all, the sense of coming home was strong
upon her.
“I could come back and live there very soon, couldn’t I?” she asked
that same evening of Lady Argent. “You know I always meant to.”
“Yes, indeed, and one knows that if that poor dear little angel had
been spared to us, you could have gone there together, except, of
course, that it was perfectly obvious from the very beginning that she
had a true religious vocation, and couldn’t have been anywhere but
where she was. But girls can do almost anything nowadays, and I’ve
no doubt that you could find some very suitable person to live with
you, since you’re of age, and have your own money; and then you
know, my dear, you’re sure to marry. But I quite see that what you
want now is just the quiet of it all, and then being fond of the place
and everything. Only if you won’t mind my asking, and, indeed, dear,
you know it’s not from curiosity, are you quite sure that you don’t
want to go back to Porthlew?”
“Yes. I know how good Cousin Bertie’s been, but indeed I don’t see
any object in our living together. I worried her dreadfully when I was
there, and it was quite decided that when I came of age some other
arrangement would be made. You know, she has such hundreds of
interests—all her work and her charities and everything—and Miss
Blandflower gives her all the help she ever wants. I don’t think I was
much use there, ever.”
There was a silence.
“I know it sounds as though I were ungrateful,” said Rosamund
desperately, “but I’m trying so hard to get at the truth of things. I don’t
feel a bit that my place is at Porthlew—I don’t know where it is. I
want to come home—but I don’t feel even that to be a solution.”
“Poor child! If only you and dear Bertie——” said Lady Argent
helplessly. “But I know what that sort of thing is—so hopeless, I
always think, when two people are both willing and ready and
tolerant as can be, and yet they don’t seem able to understand one
another. And, of course, as you say, Bertie always has her hands
full, and I know that very capable people don’t much like being
helped—I shall never forget poor Fergus—my husband, you know,
dear—over his telescope and things, even when one only wanted to
clean the lenses or some tiny little thing like that. But that was only
one thing, and he was quite ready to ask for help about anything
else. At least, almost anything else.”
Lady Argent’s expression became rather pensively reminiscent.
Rosamund remained vaguely wondering.
She felt during those days in the Wye Valley as though she were
seeking for a conviction, latent in her mind, but that yet delayed
formation and continued to evade consciousness. Once grasped,
she would be in touch with reality and in some strange way closer to
Frances.
She questioned herself helplessly.
“Am I sincere? Is my place really back at Porthlew, with Cousin
Bertie? Is it perhaps an easy evasion to say that I am of no use to
her? She gave us a home when mother died, and she has lost
Hazel. Frances left her—there is only me now. Self-sacrifice—is that
the key? But it all seems useless—pointless.”
She remained, seeking the solution.
Even when the hand of circumstance flung her against it, it still failed
to awaken her inner certainties.
Frederick Tregaskis died of pneumonia within a fortnight.
Rosamund made her preparations for a hurried departure, and found
time to return once more to the cottage on the hill.
“Is it good-bye again?” she asked dumbly of her surroundings.
“Certainly there is no doubt now that I have to go to Porthlew again.
The solution has come, I suppose.”
She felt oddly disconcerted and at variance with herself.
At all events, there was more sense of blankness than of acute
bitterness in her farewell to the cottage. The renunciation, if
renunciation there was, remained strangely devoid of pain.
She reflected dimly that all that for which the cottage in the Wye
Valley stood was hers still, and would remain hers, and in the days at
Porthlew which followed, when Bertha frankly outfaced bitterness
and loss with a courage that did not shrink from reference to their
divided sorrows, Rosamund told herself passionately that to her, and
her alone, belonged the deepest memory of Frances.
Since her solution was to come from within, and not from without, it
was almost with the sense of puzzled acceptance that is brought to
an anticipated situation, that she heard Bertha’s decision to leave
Porthlew.
“The house is too big for me, alone with poor old Minnie, and for the
matter of that I simply can’t afford it now. My dear old man’s pension
went with him, and has made a big hole in the exchequer. Besides, I
don’t know that I could altogether stand it. No, no, some rich
American shall buy Porthlew. Hazel doesn’t want it now, and there’s
no one to make a home for. One must just strike fresh roots
somewhere, that’s all, and hope for work. It’s the only thing,
Rosamund, my dear, for an old woman left by herself. Find a lame
dog that wants helping over stiles.”
But both Rosamund and Bertha were sufficiently awake to the
obvious course for it to come to life between them without even any
very definite suggestion or discussion.
“Could I leave Cornwall?” said Bertha wistfully. “I be a Carnish
woman thrü and thrü, ma dear.”
It was Rosamund’s need of Bertha that clinched it. Rosamund,
strangely, felt it to exist, and the sincerity of her urgency broke down
Bertha’s indifferent defences. The deepest craving that Mrs.
Tregaskis knew was that of being needed, and for that she left
Cornwall and went with Rosamund to the Wye Valley.
It was there, with her halved memories and strangely shared
sanctities, that Rosamund’s quest suddenly and consciously came to
an end.
In the last and most subtle renunciation, she found the solution to
which that final relinquishment held the only key, and at the same
time the one enduring link that was to bring her nearest to Frances.
 XXVIII
“SO you came here, my dear—after all?”
“After all, Nina. That just expresses the whole thing. Poor little
Rosamund had to go through the mill, and learn her own lesson, and
then after it was all over—well, she just wanted me—and there it
was!”
“You were there when she wanted you.”
Bertha laughed a little.
“Well—one is, somehow. The generation that gives and the
generation that takes. I suppose one took once upon a time, oneself,
and this keeps the balance true.”
“And your Minnie followed you, so you’re not alone?”
“Oh no! Dear Minnie! She’s played ivy to my oak-tree for so long that
it’s impossible to imagine her without a prop. I’m glad to have her,
and then Rosamund need never feel in any least little way bound—
I’m renting this tiny place from her, you know. It’s quite a business
arrangement.”
“So much the best way to do things, though, as you know, dearest,
I’m so dreadfully silly about practical things like rent and ground
taxes and technical terms like that. So you can really feel it’s your
own little domain?”
“For the time being. Anything else would have been rather an
anomaly, don’t you think? Rosamund has a great attachment to the
place—always wanted to come back here—and then it’s full of
associations of her childhood and little Francie’s. I know exactly what
she feels about it.”
Bertha’s softened expression of full understanding gave weight to
the words.
“So Rosamund’s found herself,” said Mrs. Severing musingly.
“Yes, poor dear, through coming into contact with reality. Oh, Nina,
one would give anything to teach them some other way—with less
pain and fewer tears. But they won’t listen. Ah! si jeunesse savait!”
“Dear Bertie! I understand—and don’t think that I should ever think
you egotistical and adding ‘si vieillesse pouvait!’” softly said Mrs.
Severing, freely sacrificing her reluctance to display an indifferent
French accent to the satisfaction of laying a delicate emphasis on
the pronoun relating to her friend.
“You’ve felt it all, just as I have, Nina, that’s why I can speak to you
so freely,” returned Bertha smiling.
“Darling Bertie! I wish I could give you longer, but you know how
tiresome people are, and Gwen Cotton is so dreadfully exacting.
Wretched if I don’t stay there whenever I’m anywhere near the place,
and never allowing me out of her sight when I get there. It really is
absurd—a perfect infatuation—nobody can think why. It always
makes me laugh.”
“How dear of you not to mind! That sort of thing, making one look so
absolutely ridiculous, always makes me angry,” said Bertha serenely.
“Is Morris there too?”
“He joins me to-morrow. I want him to come over and see you.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Tregaskis meditatively. “Yes.”
So Morris came, and in his blue, direct gaze Rosamund read a
sympathy that he was later on to express in words.
Together in the garden, on an afternoon that reminded them both
oddly of another afternoon spent together in the garden at Porthlew,
they stood and looked over the valley.
“May I say something?” asked Morris suddenly and gently.
“Yes.”
“In spite of everything, you are happier here than at Porthlew, aren’t
you? I mean—it’s your right place, so to speak—this valley, and your
own home and everything.”
“Yes.”
“And you and Mrs. Tregaskis understand one another now?”
“Yes,” said Rosamund simply and seriously. “Cousin Bertie is an
extraordinarily brave person, isn’t she?”
“I think she is. And she’s a wonderfully understanding one, too. I’m
glad, Rosamund. I couldn’t bear to think of you in an uncongenial
atmosphere now.”
Rosamund, to whom it sometimes seemed that the understanding of
Mrs. Tregaskis was hardest of all to bear, said nothing. The
reticencies, the very reserves, which denoted Bertha’s penetration
into the deepest joys and sorrows that Rosamund knew, lashed at
her sensitiveness as no lesser sympathy or more shallow insight
could ever have done.
Ludovic Argent, again an onlooker, slowly guessed at a little of it. He
wondered whether Morris Severing, in love with Rosamund, would
understand. He felt a curious certainty that on that understanding
would depend her answer to the inevitable question.
But Rosamund’s answer, when Morris asked her to marry him, was
in no way cryptic.
“I can’t, Morris. It’s out of the question. And, anyway, I shouldn’t be
any good to you.”
“Dearest, you would be everything in the world. Tell me why....”
“For one thing, I don’t love you. No, Morris—I don’t. If I did—there
wouldn’t be anything more to be said——”
“Indeed there would,” interjected her suitor with a sort of boyish
blitheness, “and I’d jolly well hear you say it, too.”
“It’s no good my playing at things any more,” said Rosamund,
frowning a little as she sought for her words. “I don’t mean because I
feel superior or anything ridiculous of that sort—but simply because
it doesn’t amuse me any longer.”
“I don’t want it to amuse you.”
“Well, I can’t do it with any conviction, if you like that better.”
“I don’t care if you do it with conviction or not, sweetheart—I’ll
convince you afterwards,” said Morris, his eyes smiling at her after
their endearing wont.
“No you couldn’t, Morris. Not the real part of me—the only part that
matters to either of us, in the least.”
Morris asked her to marry him again and again, and Rosamund
marvelled at her own indifference, was thrilled and shaken by his
pleading, and yet refused him with a weary certainty of being true to
a standard which, once seen, she must hold to.
The last time that she said she could not marry him finally brought
conviction to Morris.
“Oh, do leave me,” she cried. “I’m so tired, and it’s all no use. There’s
more than one sort of love in the world, Morris, and your sort and my
sort aren’t meant for one another.”
“I could show you that they are, if——”
“Well,” said Rosamund with a sort of weary candour, “I don’t want
you to. I’m too tired, mentally, for any more violent emotions, Morris.
Honestly, I don’t believe the capacity is in me any more.”
“If you fell in love, Rosamund.”
“Oh, Morris!” said Rosamund, half impatiently and half in fatigue,
“there are more ways of loving than falling in love.”
Morris turned away despairingly and left her, carrying with him the
unescapable conviction that Rosamund had no need of him.
Definitely unattainable, she became to him more desirable than ever
before, and it was of hardly any consolation to him that Nina, in the
deepest confidence, hinted at the tragedy obscuring his life, both to
her hostess and to as many of her hostess’ friends as appeared
sympathetic.
“My poor boy!” she said softly, and Morris divined that despair had
imparted a ravaged appearance to his handsome young face.
“I have only cared for one woman in my life,” he told himself, not
without some naïve feeling of surprise at the discovery. “First and
last, it’s been Rosamund. On revient toujours à son premier amour.”
The aphorism was so pathetic that he repeated it next day to Nina,
who was evidently disposed for the rôle of adoring mother,
sympathizing blindly with her boy’s wrongs.
“I can’t forgive that girl!” she cried, with all the feminine unreason of
fiction, and a blaze in her great eyes that was distinctly creditable in
view of the fact that she so seldom called it into play.
“No,” said Morris magnanimously, “I’m not worthy of her, mother. It’s
all right—only I can’t let you blame her.”
“How can I help it, darling?” tenderly asked Nina. “My heart is
breaking for you.”
Morris, who was inclined to suppose that a monopoly of broken
hearts was his, at least for the time being, could do no less than turn
away with a stifled groan, indicating a heartbreak beside which
Nina’s could not hope to rank.
It might have been Mrs. Severing’s perception of this which caused
her to remark with some decision:
“You will never, never know, Morris, till you have children of your
own, what it is to see them suffer. It is all so infinitely more bitter than
any grief of one’s own—but the young don’t know—they don’t know.”
She broke off with one of those smiles which are sadder than tears—
an impression which Mrs. Severing could at all times convey with
great accuracy.
“My youth is over,” said Morris with profound bitterness. Rather to his
surprise, Nina repressed the obvious retort, and contented herself
with a faint sigh, expressing many things.
Morris felt encouraged to a further display of feeling.
“I must get out of this place, mother,” he declared with an abandon of
recklessness that almost turned the luxurious Towers into a medieval
dungeon with every drawbridge up and guarded.
“Yes, my darling.”
“I—I can’t quite stand being so near her,” groaned Morris.
“We’ll go home again to-morrow,” soothingly declared Nina, who was
tired of Lady Cotton’s unappreciative adulation and also hated being
asked to “give a little music” every evening after dinner.
“Mother! how you understand!” cried Morris in a sudden rush of
gratitude.
Nina looked at her son with liquid eyes.
He let her take his hand for a moment, gave hers a squeeze that
drove the stones of her rings into her fingers, and dashed out of the
room.
Nina unavoidably devoted an intense second or two to the absorbing
pain in her fingers, but did so, as it were, in parenthesis. At the
earliest possible moment she had recovered herself, and was
murmuring softly: “My little son!” She saw Morris as a baby boy
again, and at the same time clearly visualized her present self
indulging in this tender illusion.
“Such a little boy,” murmured Nina again, her uninjured hand
hovering with a touching, instinctive sort of gesture about two feet
from the ground.
The same rapt look of retrospective tenderness tinged and irradiated
Mrs. Severing’s rather elusive and sketchy explanations of her
hostess and carried her serenely past the loud and affectionate
reproaches that assailed her up to the very moment of farewell.
“I hate to leave you,” she sighed, “but you must come and see my
Cornish home one day—soon.”
She stepped into the little car, swathed in the most becoming of
amber coloured veils, and remarked to Morris almost as they left the
hall-door:
“Not that anything would ever induce me to have either of them
inside my house.”
Her matter-of-fact tone caused Morris to break into an irrepressible
laugh, and after an instant she joined him. For a moment they
enjoyed a delightful sense of companionship. But Morris speedily
resumed his dejection, and even added to it a dash of recklessness
that caused him to sit back as far as possible in the driving-seat and
disregard the speed limit and his mother’s protests alike.
“Morris,” said Mrs. Severing bitterly, when the car had apparently
spun round a sharp corner on one wheel, “do you ever think of
anyone’s wishes but your own? I do all I can to please you—cut
short a visit which I am enjoying, at the risk of hurting a great friend,
come home with you simply because you wish it—and you can’t
even do such a small thing as drive a little bit carefully when I beg
you to.”
“What does it matter?” muttered Morris, in the tone of a desperado
outfacing death.
“Only that it’s very bad form to be a road-hog,” suavely said Nina.
The shot told, for Morris was exceedingly proud of his driving, but
discretion was never Mrs. Severing’s strongest weapon, and she
added rashly:
“How little you know what it is to be highly strung, my poor Morris!
My nerves have been a misery to me all my life long, and even if I’ve
never said very much about it, that doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. No
one can look at me,” said Nina with emotion, “and think me a strong
woman.”
“Lady Cotton and Mrs. Tregaskis both told me they’d never seen you
looking better,” said Morris viciously.
Nina’s slight laugh was compounded of annoyance and of a rather
satirical compassion for the blindness of the authorities quoted.
“Dear Gwen! She always loves to say that I look better after staying
with her. As for Bertie, she’s such a tower of strength herself, that I
rather fancy nothing short of a broken leg would ever attract her
attention. I’ve heard other people say the same thing about her too,
dear, kind thing though she is.”
But Morris was annoyed.
“Well, I quite agree with them both,” he remarked disagreeably. “I’ve
never seen you look better, mother—the picture of health.”
His mother smiled the pitying smile of one better informed, and
Morris, subconsciously aware of it, gazed straight ahead of him with
absorbed determination.
“I’m afraid what I call my best would be a very poor state of health for
most people,” murmured Nina, and added hurriedly: “Don’t talk to me
any more, Morris, I want to close my eyes. I had a very nearly
sleepless night.”
Morris was not minded to concede to his parent the feminine
privilege of the last word.
“I’m sure you must be much stronger than you suppose, mother, if
you can sleep when you’re nervous.”
On this encouraging reflection he drove the car with great and
unnecessary rapidity to the junction where the chauffeur met him
and took charge of it, while Morris and his mother proceeded to
Cornwall by train.
The journey was made by Morris in a smoking carriage, with the
considerate remark: “Do finish your doze in peace, mother. I want to
smoke, and besides, I wouldn’t disturb you for the world.”
It may reasonably be conjectured that the annoyed Mrs. Severing did
not follow this filial advice.
The ensuing days at Pensevern were pleasant neither to Nina nor to
her son.
Morris played the piano stormily, and Nina, wincing perceptibly, said:
“Don’t, Morris. It jars horribly to hear that banging. Your touch is not
at all improved.”
“The ‘light trills and runs’ of the eighties are altogether out of keeping
with modern music, mother.”
“Dear me, is that what you call modern music, my poor boy? I should
simply call it strumming. But I suppose,” said Nina with an annoying
laugh, “that you like to call it improvization.”
“Like!” said her son with gloomy scorn, unable to think of a better
retort. “I don’t suppose I shall ever like anything again.”
He flung out of the room.
Most of his days might be said to be spent in this exercise, resorted
to at ever shortening intervals, until finally the time came when he
prefaced it by a definite statement:
“Mother, this is no good. I must go away.”
“Very well, Morris. You know I’m used to being alone.”
“Of course I know it is lonely for you in a way, especially since Mrs.
Tregaskis has left Porthlew——”
“Very lonely,” repeated Nina with a patient smile. “But I shall make
some music, Morris, and read a good deal in the long evenings, and
then there’s the garden....”
Nina’s acquaintance with the garden hardly extended beyond the
kaleidoscope of herbaceous border outside the drawing-room
windows, but she liked the idea of silently communing with Nature.
“I shall go to America with that concert-party,” announced Morris,
referring to certain projects of a professional friend.
Nina, without the slightest warning, dissolved into tears.
She cried so much less becomingly than usual that Morris was
moved to quick, sudden compunction.
He came and knelt beside her.
“Darling, don’t cry. I won’t go if you hate it. But what am I to do here?
There’s no work fit for a man.”
Nina continued to weep.
Morris gazed at her with miserable perplexity. Accustomed though
he was to Nina’s easy tears, they invariably caused him acute